Funeral doom was always going to occupy space, as space is the place where death reigns and nothing lives. Being shuttled out into space in an endless orbit around earth or some distant planet is probably an extreme take on what life means; the daily wait in angst for your own death and demise. What's more surprising is that this elegant funeral doom shuttle was shuttled out of Italy. Fuoco Fatuo is a funeral death/doom band from Italy; Backwater is their second full-length.

We are heading for a place where there is no sunlight or life, the majestic vision of this band's attempt to create the sound of the void in music. Looking at the album art and the song titles, I imagine that this is a spacey void. But the sound is open for interpretation - a volcano spewing lava. It's an album that doesn't need new equipment or new inventions to create its void; it's done by using the standard metal instruments: a droning guitar sound and droning harsh vocals. The guitar is what makes space; the droning sound of one of the rhythm parts creates the image of space while the leads are the shuttle drifting through space. The rhythm section with the drums amplifies any movement that's out of the ordinary, and there are probably some keyboards here to thicken the sound. And it's a quite monotonous journey through space as one would expect; the band makes some shifts in tempo as if there were some meteorites coming our way. But the changes in tempo are always subordinated to fit the overall idea of creating the sound of the void. This is an album that is more interested in stretching the limits of doom as a genre than writing memorable riffs.

Down here on earth, it's easy to hear that this is one of the best doom albums that has ever come out of Italy. It's an album that has the sound of Evoken as its base, but it uses that sound to create something that's a bit more extreme and aesthetically more interesting today. Fuoco Fatuo showed that they were a promising doom band on their early EPs and their debut, The Viper Slithers In The Ashes Of What Remains. When the label Profound Lore picked up the band, the expectation was that there would be another good album from the Italians, but Backwater exceeds all expectations; it operates on a totally different level compared to the debut. The band has gone from being a good death/doom band to a funeral doom/death band with a characteristic sound that relies heavily on a well-thought-out aesthetic and this is a band that now demands a lot more of its listeners.

Even if most people would regard this as exemplary doom quality-wise, it's an album that's nonnegotiable when it comes to depicting nothingness. It's an album that moves through space with the same elegance as any Darkspace album, but when listening to a Darkspace album you will get some memorable riffs and some heavy metal culture to spice things up. Sitting down with Backwater is moving through nothingness and being sucked up by the monotony of the abyss. This is an exemplary and genre-stretching doom album, but this is a demanding album that you probably won't have on repeat; it's an album to put on when you want to think of your own nothingness.